Death Delivery
by Lacrow
Summary: Delivering packages is hard enough, let alone doing it in the hot Nevada sun. Fresh-from-training Maka has her work cut out for her, that is until she meets the other drivers in her fleet. It's going to be a long summer.


**Disclaimer: **I do not own Soul Eater or its characters

* * *

**Death Delivery**

**by. **Lacrow

"What do you mean? I don't need fricken a rescue!"

That last part came out a little louder than she had intended. For a moment, she'd forgotten Kidd was technically her boss. Silently she slumped into her seat, the monotonous ticking of her hazard lights ringing in her ears as if mocking her. Beads of sweat hung above her brow; Even the A/C on full blast couldn't save her completely from the arid Nevada summer. Cars whizzed by on the road next to her, breaking the tension somewhat.

"In all honesty, Maka, I know you don't." Kidd, the dispatcher, replied even-toned. "The only reason I'm sending you one is because the other team has finished already and they have a lot of time to kill. My goal is to keep all of you out for as long as possible so you get your hours."

Maka looked over to her right. She had a ride-along that day, her new friend Tsubaki. The latter looked confused, unable to hear Kidd on the other end. "I see. Well, are there any other routes that they can pull from? This is my first day, and I wanted to see how we'd do."

"Commendable." The smirk was almost palpable through the phone. "But unfortunately, no. Yours is the only route near them. They should be contacting you shortly, I told them to take a break before doing so."

Maka tried to hide the huff in her voice. "Okay."

"Good. Call the emergency number if you need anything," Kidd's fatherly voice replied. "Oh and, in the future, rescues will call you without a head's up. I only called you this time since this is your first day."

Maka nodded, even though there was no way he could see it. The line went blank, and she hung up her end. Tsubaki waited for her to explain what was going on patiently, and after a second of pouting, Maka let her head roll to the side.

"Apparently another team finished early and we're giving them one of our totes."

Tsubaki blinked, surprised. "Already? It's barely 4 o'clock!"

Maka blinked as well. She looked at the dashboard and sure enough, Tsubaki was right. Their shifts were ten hours long, and usually people finished around 6:30 to make it back around 7:30. Whoever this team was, they either had an easy route or they were fast. Very fast.

"Do you ever finish around this time, Tsubaki?" Maka asked, not taking her eyes off the dash.

Tsubaki straightened in her seat a little bit. "Of course, all the time."

Maka's eyes darted to her co-pilot, " You liar."

A moment of silence. Then, the two broke down into smiles. Tsubaki pulled her seat back a bit and reached behind her in the van, grabbing the backpack she'd brought with her. She rummaged through it and pulled out a can of mixed nuts and some crackers, leaving both on the dashboard so the two of them could share.

"I wish I'd known I could bring stuff with me out here," Maka lamented as she leaned in and scooped out some mixed nuts. "All I got is this monster."

She motioned to a giant, ugly looking water bottle hidden in the side of her door. It was cheap at the time and held enough water to last her all day, but its contents were already hot and there was no point in drinking it anymore. Tsubaki giggled.

"Yeah, most people bring their backpacks. Some people even bring little ice chests to keep their food and drinks cold."

"Really?!" Maka's jaw dropped. "They let you do that?"

Tsubaki nodded. "Mhm, the rules are pretty relaxed. All they care about is you were your vest, drive safe, and get rid of all your packages."

Maka looked down at the bright neon safety vest she wore. She didn't see how it was supposed to help much, seeing as how they only delivered during the day. Still, rules were rules, and if that was pretty much the only thing she had to do then so be it. Quite frankly she was glad there weren't a whole list of things she needed to memorize.

This was her first day with a route. Tusbaki was one week her senior, as was most of the people working at Death Delivery. It was a new fleet of drivers for a new division of the business, meaning roughly 100 people were all trying to figure out what the hell they were doing. This also included the leads and managers, who themselves were trying to learn as they went. Most of the things people learned were from one another.

Maka popped some crackers into her mouth and looked at Tsubaki's backpack, then at the ugly water bottle to her left. Still chewing, she opened her mouth to say something and-

-The phone rang. Surprised, Maka scrambled and fumbled. Tsubaki leaned in to help her catch it, and both girls ended up knocking their foreheads together. Maka sputtered cracker crumbs, Tsubaki fell backwards and clutched her noggin. The phone continued to ring. Maka reached down and answered without thinking.

"'Fewwo?" She asked, immediately regretting not swallowing beforehand.

"Hey, is this Maka?" a man's voice replied from the other end.

"'Yu!" Maka desperately tried to choke down the crackers. She reached for her water bottle and tilted her head back to wash everything down.

Unfortunately, she'd forgotten the water was hotter than the Nevada desert. She sputtered once more, as the scalding water rushed down her throat. Tsubaki leapt up to help her, grabbing her own water bottle. She waved it in Maka's face for her to take it, but the former was too busy dying to oblige.

"Uh, Kidd told us to rescue you. Can you give us an address to meet up at?"

Tsubaki continued to wave the water in Maka's face. "'Fop!"

"What?"

Frustrated and embarrassed, Maka finally came to her senses. She took the water from Tsubaki, and replaced it with the phone. She motioned for her ride-along to handle the phone call.

Tsubaki nodded, also feeling somewhat embarrassed. "Hi, this is Tsubaki. What do you need?"

Maka chugged to ice-cold water from Tsubaki's bottle. Relief washed over her as the crackers finally went down, her throat cooled off, and she didn't have to talk on the phone. She sighed in content, screwing the cap back on the bottle before shoving it under Tsubaki's seat. Maka then waited as her friend finished up the details of their rescue.

"...Uhuh, yeah. Okay, meet you here." Tsubaki smiled. "Oh and, tell Black Star to calm down, I can hear him all the way in the background."

Maka tilted her head as Tsubaki hung up, putting the phone back on its car charger. "Black Star?"

"Yeah, another driver. We all have a group chat, and that's his nickname. We all just started calling him that." Tsubaki's face revealed a tired smirk. "He's a bit much, let's put it that way."

"Group chat?" Maka's eyes narrowed. Why didn't she know about that? "Wait, you know those guys?"

Tsubaki realized her mistake right away and pulled out her phone. She'd already gotten Maka's number previously, all she had to do was send her the invite. "Those two, yes. They're both in the group chat, along with a dozen or so others."

Maka felt her phone vibrate. She unlocked it and saw the invite, immediately accepting it and jumping on to see a bunch of nicknames and faces she somewhat recognized. One in particular stuck out to her.

"I take it the one with the crazy hair is Black Star?" Maka deadpanned, before confirming for herself by looking at his profile.

"Yup," Tsubaki smiled.

"Who was the other guy on the phone?"

"Oh, that was Soul." Tsubaki squinted in thought. "I'm pretty sure it was. He has a distinct voice."

Maka raised an eyebrow. "Soul? Where do these guys come up with such weird nicknames?"

Tsubaki shook her head. She took the phone from Maka and scrolled through the people in the group chat. She pulled up a particular profile and held it up for Maka to see. "Not a nickname."

Maka looked over the person in the picture. Tanned skin, sunglasses, and almost bleach white hair. The picture was recent, at least she figured it had to be. "Not a nickname?"

"Nope." Tsubaki gave Maka back her phone before grabbing her own to play with. "Both of them were in my training class. Black Star is all over the place. Soul is more the calm one."

Maka stared at the picture for a moment before digging deeper into his profile. It was mostly blank, which was surprising. "Do you know anything else about him?"

Tusbaki looked up from her phone. "Not really, why?"

"Just wondering," Maka replied, eyes twisted in thought.

A wry smile slowly crept across Tsubaki's lips. "Wondering?"

Maka looked up at her friend and immediately regretted saying anything. "Not for that, Tsubaki! I'm just wondering how the two of them got done so quickly if they're both new!"

Tsubaki's smile lingered for just a second too long, making Maka uncomfortable. Eventually the woman relented, however. She looked back at her phone. "Well, they're boys. This is probably a game to them. Whoever gets finished first is the winner."

Maka thought about that answer for a moment and nodded to herself. It made sense. Tsubaki, however, continued. "Or in Black Star's case it's probably more of a workout."

"He goes to the gym a lot?" Maka asked, half-heartedly trying to find a game to play while they wait.

"He certainly looks like he does. There isn't an ounce of fat on the man's whole body."

At that point, Maka looked up her phone and gave Tsubaki her own wry smile. "Oh?"

"Yea-" Tsubaki caught herself and shot a glaring look to Maka, who's smile had quickly become a shit-eating grin. "Oh, shut up!"

Sounds of laughter echoed from the van. The roar of traffic had long since faded away, as if a lull had broken before rush hour. On their lonely stretch of road, the only thing keeping them company was the Nevada sun, the blinking of their hazard lights, and the thought that soon there would be two more people to join them.

A knock on her window rapt her from the monotony of phone games.

First she looked at the clock. They'd been killing time for close to thirty minutes. Maka then looked at Tsubaki, who had at this point passed out and whose head bobbed forward in a constant state of half-sleep. Finally, Maka looked out her window. Standing there was the person she'd seen in the group chat; Bleached hair, sunglasses, tall, it was Soul.

Maka rolled down the window. "Hey."

"Sorry we took so long, Black Star had to pee." Soul drawled, pointing at the van now parked behind Maka.

There was some shouting from the other van, but Maka couldn't make out what Black Star was saying. Judging by how Soul told him to shut up, it probably wasn't very important anyway. She instead looked Soul over. He wasn't wearing any of the proper uniform. No safety vest, just a standard black work-out shirt instead of the company T-shirt, and black shorts. All that black, wasn't he hot in the sun?

"Anyway," he brought his attention back to Maka. "You got your itinerary?"

"My-?" Maka thought about it for a second, before remembering what that was. "Oh, right!"

She leaned into the dashboard and rummaged through some papers. She pulled out one with a bunch of letters and numbers on it. They were the totes that she had to deliver that day, each one having a certain amount of packages. She looked back into the van, seeing that of the eight or so that they'd started off with, they had whittled it down to three. Since the boys were there to rescue them, that meant they were going to take a tote and deliver it for them.

Maka handed the paper to Soul. "Our last one is C3, so go ahead and take that one. We'll deliver the other two. At least, I'm pretty sure that's how we do it."

Soul looked at the paper for a moment and shook his head. "Nah, we'll take C2 and C3."

"TWO totes?" Maka gaped, taken aback. "But we only have three total!"

"Right," Soul nodded, as if that made total sense. "We'll deliver your last two, and you get the other one."

Maka shook her head vehemently. "This is our route! What are we supposed to do for two and a half hours?"

Just like earlier, she got a little louder than she intended. This time, she had woken Tsubaki up from her slumber. Probably for the best, though. That way Maka had some back up. The woman shuddered awake and looked over to see Soul standing there at the door. Immediately and with mild embarrassment she wiped the drool from here face and stretched.

"Soul!" Tsubaki greeted, trying and failing to stifle a yawn.

"Tsubaki, he wants two of our totes, but we only have three!" She explained, flustered.

"Hm?" Tsubaki leaned into Maka's side, in order to talk to Soul better. "Why?"

Soul held up the paper to show both of them. "Your last two combined equal your third one. It took you guys six hours to do five totes. If we both go slow, we'll pad out the next two hours no problem."

Tsubaki glanced at Maka before turning back to Soul. "That depends, can you two go slow?"

Maka looked down at Soul. He flashed the two ladies a grin like shark's teeth. "When it's necessary."

The women eyed one another. Tsubaki gave smile and a shrug before leaning back into her seat. Maka gave a half-hearted huff before breathing, "Fine."

Soul tapped the door before making his way around the back. Maka got up from her chair and climbed into the back of the van. There, empty totes littered the area. They hadn't had the chance to pick them up yet, and frankly it felt like having a messy apartment with company over. She scrambled to throw them all together, and barely made it before Soul opened up the back door and climbed inside with her. Tsubaki curled into her chair, phone in hand.

He immediately found the two totes. They were already waiting for him in the very back. "Thank god you know how to organize these. It's a pain when they don't know which tote is which."

"I thought that's how everyone did it?" Maka replied absently, picking up the oversized boxes that wouldn't fit in the tote.

Soul grabbed some from her. "The ones that aren't idiots."

Maka's eyes narrowed. She watched him hop out and make his way towards the other van. The side door was open on his, and waiting for him was another man that looked exactly as described earlier. Black Star was shorter than Soul, but still had to crouch inside their van. She couldn't get a great look at him as he was half obscured by the van, but just by looking at his arms as he grabbed the boxes from Soul, Maka could tell he was strong. Not a bodybuilder or anything, just very fit.

Soul came back, grabbed another round of boxes, and repeated. The third time, he grabbed a whole tote without even waiting for her help. Irked, Maka waited by the final tote. When he came back one last time, she was already holding it, ready to give it to him.

"Thanks," he said plainly, reaching for the tote.

Maka leaned down to hand it to him. Two things, however, got in her first thing was that Tsubaki had loaded this particular tote, and forgot to tell her that, even though there weren't as many packages inside, they were a lot heavier than the other ones. She wasn't expecting the extra weight, nor the second thing, which was the large 18-wheeler that happened to be cruising by at that exact moment. Just as Maka leaned in to give him the heavy bag, a huge rattle of wind rocked her and the van. Maka lost her footing, Soul had no grip, and the tote went flying.

Soul scrambled, not knowing what to catch or how to catch it. Packages fell to the ground, as did Maka. She landed with a thud, knee first into the tiny rocks and debris that littered the side of the road. Boxes and envelopes were flung about, mostly on the side of the road, but also directly into traffic.

"Fuck!" Maka shouted, feeling the sting down the length of her leg almost immediately.

Soul echoed her. He knelt and tried to pick her up, but backed off when she pushed him away. "Are you hurt?"

"No!" Maka didn't want anyone touching her at the moment. She knew almost right away something was wrong, but didn't admit it until she tried shifting and her leg would not oblige. "Okay, yes!"

At this point, the commotion had brought Tsubaki and Black Star outside their vans and both ran up to help. Soul motioned to the packages. "Get them out of the street! If they get run over we're screwed!"

"Got it!" Black Star gave a salute and ran almost blindly into traffic. Granted there were no nearby cars, but even if there were it didn't seem like that would have stopped him. He ran around in a mad dash, picking up whatever he could grab and threw whatever he had back onto the side of the road to be put back later.

Soul motioned for Tsubaki to help Maka. She took his place as he went to throw everything back into the tote. That left the two girls there on their knees, unsure of what to do next.

"Can you move?" Tsubaki asked, touching Maka's leg gently.

Maka wiggled her toes inside her shoe and slowly unfolded her leg. "Yea...I don't think I broke anything. At least, I hope not."

She laid down on her butt, both legs outstretched in front of her. Comparing her two knees, the right one was fine, compared to her left which was twice its normal size and bleeding. Chunks of rocks and other debris stuck out from the wound. She moaned, more out of frustration than pain. This was not how she was intending for her first day to go.

"Yeah, that's a knot." Tsubaki sighed. "I don't have anything to wrap it up with, but I can at least rinse it off. Let me go get some water."

Maka nodded. "I'm not going anywhere. Oh and use my water bottle, I'm not going to drink it anyway…"

Tsubaki nodded, disappearing into the van quickly to fetch the water. At the same time, Black Star and Soul tossed whatever was left back into the tote. The latter brought it back into their van, as Black Star approached Maka.

"You okay?" he asked plainly.

"Yeah," she replied, just as plainly.

He knelt down on his tip-toes and looked at her knee. "Kind of looks like when I dropped a fifty pound weight on my knee that one time."

It took Maka a moment to process what he'd just said. "How...did you drop a weight on your knee?"

"I was trying to do crunches with a barbell," he replied, no emotion on his face whatsoever.

Maka hesitated yet again. "...Why?"

Black Star nodded. "I am not a smart man."

Maybe it was the delivery, or just the fact that she had to laugh at something other than herself, but Maka busted out laughing. Maybe that was the plan all along, as Black Star gave her a big smile in return. He stayed there until Tsuabki came back with the water. Maka hissed as she poured the hot water over her open wound, but relief set in quickly after. The debris wasn't too deep in and blood had mostly stopped, although the hot water seemed to reopen it a little.

As if on cue, Soul arrived. He had a T-shirt in his hand, one that Maka recognized almost immediately. "Is that the company shirt?"

"Yup," he replied simply. He squatted down and ripped the thing apart with his teeth, creating a strand long and wide enough to cover her knee with. Maka watched him wrap it around her twice before topping it off with a very shabby knot.

One thing she noticed though was that he'd taken his sunglasses off. This was the first time she'd seen his eyes and they were…bloodshot? No, just red. Or red tinted. She'd never seen anything like that before, and quite frankly she was caught staring. The knot tied, Soul looked up. He caught her eyes linger for a fraction of a second, before she mustered a hoarse "Thank you."

A smirk graced his face. It was different from the grin he gave her before. It was calm and comforting. She liked this smile better, Maka admitted to herself. He looked like less of an asshole that way.

"Can you walk?" he asked her. Maka nodded. He continued, "Cool, well. If it's alright with you, we'll take your last tote, too."

"Wha-?" Maka started to bemoan, before looking at all three of them around her. Tsubaki looked to be with Soul on this one.

"Yeah, you take it easy." Black Star added, hopping to his feet. "You're in no position to be running around, and it's not fair to make Tsubaki do all the heavy lifting, right?"

Maka lamented. She hadn't thought of that. She looked at Tsubaki, who was vehemently shaking her head. "No, no! I don't mind at all! But, I do think we should make our way back and tell Kidd what happened. That is, as long as that's alright with you two?"

Soul shrugged. "We offered. It's fine with me."

"It'll give us something to do!" Black Star grinned, already stretching for some physical activity.

Tsubaki smiled, before turning to Maka. "Well?"

Maka looked around at all three of them. She sighed, before giving a meek smile. "Well, okay. Thank you."

"Don't mention it." Soul held out a hand for her to take. She grabbed it, and he mostly pulled her up with little effort.

Tsubaki got up and took over from there. She walked with Maka to the passenger side door and helped her climb into the chair. She went around the front as Soul and Black Star got the remainder of the packages and flung them into their van. They did it quickly, as Tsubaki barely got the car started and mirrors shifted before there was honk.

Tsubaki and Maka looked to their left as Soul pulled out next to them. They rolled their windows down and shouted, "See you at the station!"

All four of them waved, and in an instant the boys were gone.

Tsubaki shifted the van into drive and, very slowly, eased her way onto the road. For a few minutes after that nothing was said, until finally Maka broke the silence. "I appreciate what they did for us, but I feel really guilty about all this…"

Tsubaki seemed to be looking at all the rear-view mirrors at once. Clearly, she was not used to driving the vans yet. "Oh, don't worry about it, Maka. We'll help them the next time they need it. It's a give and take. That's what friends are for."

Silence washed over them once more. The A/C still on full blast as well as the hazard lights that no one remembered to turn off, Maka tuned it all out. She pulled out her phone and looked at the group chat that she was now apart of. Her picture was at the very top. Strings of different conversations all happening at once, some of which she was sure were taking place while driving.

A message from a minute or two before was fresh on the bottom. It was a picture from Black Star. She opened it, and there was a selfie of him. In the background was her, Soul, and Tsubaki, their backs to him, as the latter two helped her walk to the van. He still had the giant grin on his face, and the text on the picture read "Helping out the new girl. Feels good."

Maka stared at the picture for a long time. First at Black Star's contagious smile, then at Soul, who was way nicer than she had first given him credit for, and then at Tsubaki. Her eyes went from the picture to the real thing, who still struggled with driving but seemed to be getting the hang of it. Maka looked back at the picture and gave it a thumb's up on the app.

Another meek smile inched across her lips. "Friends, huh?"


End file.
